REUTERS INSTITUTE DIGITAL NEWS REPORT 2016 Supported by Surveyed by REUTERS INSTITUTE DIGITAL NEWS REPORT 2016 Nic Newman with Richard Fletcher, David A. L. Levy and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Supported by Surveyed by © Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM / DIGITAL NEWS REPORT 2016 4 Foreword by David A. L. Levy 5 Methodology 6 Authorship and Research Acknowledgements 7 Section 1 Overview and Key Findings by Nic Newman 8 Section 2 Analysis by Country 30 2.1 United States 32 2.14 Netherlands 58 2.2 United Kingdom 34 2.15 Switzerland 60 2.3 Germany 36 2.16 Austria 62 2.4 France 38 2.17 Hungary 64 2.5 Italy 40 2.18 Czech Republic 66 2.6 Spain 42 2.19 Poland 68 2.7 Portugal 44 2.20 Greece 70 2.8 Ireland 46 2.21 Turkey 72 2.9 Norway 48 2.22 South Korea 74 2.10 Sweden 50 2.23 Japan 76 2.11 Finland 52 2.24 Australia 78 2.12 Denmark 54 2.25 Canada 80 2.13 Belgium 56 2.26 Brazil 82 Section 3 Further Analysis and International Comparison 84 3.1 Sources of News 86 3.2 Segmentations across and within Countries 87 3.3 Comparative Brand Data Analysis 89 3.4 How Audiences Discover News Online 92 3.5 Public Service Broadcasters 93 3.6 Trust in the News in More Depth 94 3.7 Distinctions Between Hard and Soft News 96 3.8 Participation and Online News 99 3.9 Paying for Online News 103 Section 4 Essays 106 4.1 The Challenging New Economics of Journalism 108 Mark Thompson, CEO, New York Times 4.2 Why Trust Matters 110 Ed Williams, CEO, Edelman UK & Ireland 4.3 People Want Personalised Recommendations (Even as they Worry about the Consequences) 112 Rasmus Kleis Neilsen, Director of Research, Reuters Institute 4.4 The Topography of Trust: Views from UK News Consumers 115 Alison Preston, Head of Digital Literacy, Ofcom Postscript and Further Reading 118 4 / 5 FOREWORD Dr David A. L. Levy Director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) This is our fifth annual report that explores the changing Bredow Institute in Hamburg, Roskilde University in Denmark, environment around news across countries. The report is The University of Tampere in Finland, and the School of based on a survey of more than 50,000 people in 26 countries, Communication at the University of Navarra in Spain. which makes it the largest ongoing comparative study of news consumption in the world and twice as big as last year. A key Many of our partners are also organising events or country focus is in Europe where we have done the bulk of our reports looking in more detail at national themes and adding polling – but we are delighted to have added Canada and wider value to this international project. South Korea this year to the United States, Australia, Brazil, We continue to make efforts to open up as much of the data and Japan, which have been part of our survey for some time. as possible via our website at (www.digitalnewsreport.org). This year’s report comes against the backdrop of renewed This contains slidepacks, charts and raw data tables, along concerns about the future of the news industry, the move with a licence that encourages reuse, subject to attribution to mobile, the rise of ad-blocking and the role of technical to the Reuters Institute. Also this year, we have updated platforms and other intermediaries. We have data on many our interactive feature, which allows anyone to explore and of these issues and find compelling evidence about the visualise the data by themselves by country and over time. move to distributed content and the growing importance We hope that all of this will continue to build into an of social media as a source of news. Also this year we’ve invaluable resource for academics, media owners, looked to understand how branded news is found, consumed journalists and those developing policy. A description of and shared in a more distributed news world with the help the methodology is available on the website along with of some additional focus groups in the UK, US, Germany and the complete questionnaire. Spain. We reference this research throughout the report and we’ll be publishing a full account of these sessions on our Making all this possible, we are hugely grateful to our website later in 2016. sponsors this year: Google, the BBC, Ofcom, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BIA), the Media Industry Once again we have combined the key data points with a Research Foundation of Finland, the Fritt Ord Foundation in series of essays, which add depth and context to the findings. Norway, the Korea Press Foundation, Edelman UK, as well New York Times CEO Mark Thompson reflects on the business as our academic sponsors at the Hans Bredow Institute, the challenges, while Edelman UK CEO Ed Williams explores the University of Navarra, the University of Canberra and the importance of trust and the role of brands based on their Centre d’études sur les médias, Université Laval in Canada. ground-breaking work on these issues with the Edelman Trust Barometer. RISJ Director of Research, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen We are also grateful to YouGov, our polling company, who explores our attitudes to algorithms in serving up relevant did everything possible to accommodate our complex news stories and Ofcom’s Alison Preston has been exploring requirements and helped our research team analyse and how young and older groups in the UK navigate issues contextualise the data. like trust and credibility in a more fragmented and complex news ecosystem. I am particularly grateful to Nic Newman for his great work in leading our most ambitious Digital News Report to date In terms of academic partnerships, we are joined this year and for surfacing such a rich analysis from a mass of data, by the Centre d’études sur les médias, Université Laval, to Richard Fletcher for all his work on the report, the data in Québec City, Canada. Our active research community analysis and the country profiles, and to Alex Reid for so includes the News and Media Research Centre at Canberra ably managing the process of moving from manuscript University in Australia, Dublin City University, Ireland, the Hans to publication. REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM / DIGITAL NEWS REPORT 2016 6 METHODOLOGY This study has been commissioned by the Reuters Institute • A number of face-to-face focus groups were held in the US, for the Study of Journalism to understand how news is being UK, Germany and Spain to explore issues relating to news consumed in a range of countries. Research was conducted by consumption and the question of trust. YouGov using an online questionnaire at the end of January/ beginning of February 2016. Our survey was conducted online and as such the results will under-represent the consumption habits of people who are • The data were weighted to targets based on census/industry not online (typically older, less affluent, and with limited formal accepted data, such as age, gender and region, to represent education). Where relevant, we have tried to make this clear the total population of each country. The sample is reflective within the text. The main purpose, however, is to track the of the population that has access to the internet. activities and changes over time within the digital space – as REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM • As this survey deals with news consumption, we filtered out well as gaining understanding about how offline media and slideanyone 2who said that they had not consumed any news in online media are used together. A fuller description of the the past month, in order to ensure that irrelevant responses methodology and a discussion of non-probability sampling didn’t adversely affect data quality. This category averaged techniques can be found on our website. 3.5% but was as high as 13% in Canada. Along with country-based figures, throughout the report • A comprehensive online questionnaire was designed to we also use aggregate figures based on responses from all capture all aspects of news consumption. respondents across all the countries covered. These figures are meant only to indicate overall tendencies and should be treated with caution. METHODOLOGY COUNTRY FINAL SAMPLE TOTAL INTERNET COUNTRY FINAL SAMPLE TOTAL INTERNET SIZE POPULATION PENETRATION SIZE POPULATION PENETRATION USA 2,197 321,368,864 87% Netherlands 2,006 16,900,726 96% UK 2,024 64,767,115 92% Switzerland 2,004 8,236,573 87% Germany 2,035 81,174,000 88% Austria 2,000 8,584,926 83% France 2,162 66,132,169 84% Hungary 2,056 9,849,000 76% Italy 2,195 60,795,612 62% Czech Republic 2,014 10,538,275 80% Spain 2,104 46,439,864 77% Poland 2,000 38,005,614 68% Portugal 2,018 10,374,822 68% Greece 2,036 10,812,467 63% Ireland 2,003 4,625,885 83% Turkey 2,157 77,695,904 60% Norway 2,019 5,165,802 96% South Korea 2,147 49,115,196 92% Sweden 2,030 9,747,355 95% Japan 2,011 126,919,659 91% Finland 2,041 5,471,753 94% Australia 2,021 22,751,014 93% Denmark 2,020 5,659,715 96% Canada 2,011 35,675,834 95% Belgium 2,018 11,258,434 85% Brazil 2,001 204,259,812 58% Please note that in both Brazil and Turkey our samples are representative of urban rather than national populations and as such the internet penetration is likely to be higher than stated above, which must be taken into consideration when interpreting results.